Condo Culture: Skype-a-meeting is perfectly legal

QSome of our directors wish to conduct our board meetings through emails. They said this would eliminate travelling and meetings would be terminated much more quickly. Is this method legal? I prefer to meet with a board to discuss matters. Since we all live in the same community, I feel this is not an inconvenience. Your advice please!

A According to section 35(5) of the Condominium Act, the directors may hold a meeting by teleconference or another form of communication system that allows the directors to participate concurrently. However, it goes on to state that the corporation must have a bylaw in place authorizing that directors meetings can be held in this manner and all directors of the corporation must consent to this method.

If the issues are very straightforward and do not require a lot of discussion, then emailing could be appropriate, and especially if there is very bad weather and one or more directors cannot make it to the meeting. On the other hand, it may be very important that all directors meet in person if there are significant issues that require in-depth discussion. For example, new budgets, community mobile advertising fees, condo fee increases, rule changes, reserve fund matters, etc., require a great deal of thought and discussion.

Each condominium corporation has the opportunity to experiment with the option of holding directors meetings by teleconference. However, once a few meetings have been conducted in this manner, the board will decide if this method works best for them.